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I-49 connector a sense of hope for Allendale

aburris@gannett.com
Published 3:29 p.m. CT April 13, 2015

Left, Cadadrien Mitchell, 12, and her aunt Jeanette Capers have lined in Allendale their whole lives and would like to see it improve.(Photo: Henrietta Wildsmith/The Times)

In Shreveport, the promise of an economic revival in Allendale for some lies with the proposed Interstate 49 Inner City Connector.

“I’ve been praying it would bring (a) more businesses and (b) more people to live here. And if you bring in more businesses and people to live here from other areas that means that more money is being spent. People would not avoid this area like they’ve been doing before,” said Joyce Brinson, who moved away from Allendale at age 19 but still maintains a business there on Milam Street.

Those who’ve studied the impact of highways on inner city neighborhoods aren’t convinced of the proposed connector’s promise.

Some, such as former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist, equate the hope supporters have for the economic benefits of inner city connector in Shreveport to false confidence.

“I don’t know of any situation in any urban area that has benefited from putting a road in,” said Norquist, who also is the former president and CEO of the Congress of New Urbanism, a nonprofit that promotes walkable, mixed-used communities. CNU has partnered with the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development, Environmental Protection Agency and Federal Highway Administration.

The organization was among a group of activists and planners — including New Orleans-based architecture and planning firm Waggonner & Ball Architects and Smart Mobility Inc. — that produced a 2010 study about the restoration of the Claiborne Avenue corridor in the Big Easy.

Much like the I-49 connector, construction of Interstate 10, or the Claiborne Avenue expressway, more than 50 years ago brought with it the promise of easy, high-speed access to would help keep inner city New Orleans energized and vibrant.

But when the state built the elevated 3.9-mile highway in the 1960s through the Claiborne Avenue corridor — a black commercial district described in reports, books and other publications as once being lively and lined with oaks — the end result was a decaying community.

Fumes and noise of cars moving swiftly down an elevated highway replaced shops and homes there.

Families and businesses left.

Claiborne Avenue had 132 registered businesses in 1960, according to the 2010 study. There were 114 in 1965 and 64 registered businesses in 1971. By 2000, only 35 businesses were located along the corridor.

The oak trees were replaced with the interstate’s concrete columns, now painted with images of the same in a pale reminder of the past.

Urban and cities planners say what happened to the Claiborne Avenue corridor isn’t uncommon. Across the country, the construction of interstates destroyed neighborhoods they sliced.

The inner city connector would be an approximately 3.6-mile highway intersecting Shreveport to connect I-49 at the existing I-20 interchange with I-49 north near the I-220 interchange.

Local business and transportation and public officials have long characterized the proposed inner city connector project as a must that would bring drivers into the Shreveport’s inner city. The argument has been that gas stations, retail shops and fast food restaurants would pop up along the interchanges to help revitalize the inner city.

The connector’s large economic impact on Shreveport makes it one of the most important issues of today, said state Rep. Roy Burrell, a staunch supporter of inner city connector.

Burrell said Shreveport and surrounding areas stand to lose millions if the connector or something similar is not built.

Scott Martinez, president of the North Louisiana Economic Partnership, also supports routing the connector through Shreveport.

“I’m in support of the most efficient route, which is through the inner city. That’s my personal view,” Martinez said. “Looking at the time it would take to do it and just the route, as far as efficiency and length and distance involved, I think that’s the best route I’ve seen.”

Kent Rogers, executive director of the Northwest Louisiana Council of Governments, said the current formal environmental impact study also will have an economic component.

The study will determine how the connection will be made and evaluate five possible routes for the connector, Rogers said via email. A record of decision will be produced and will describe in detail the preferred path of the connector.

A “no build” option is included, he said. The Federal Highway Administration and Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development are reviewing the study documents, Rogers said.

J. David Waggonner III, CEO and President of Waggonner & Ball and son of late Bossier Congressman Joseph David Waggonner Jr., isn’t convinced of the proposed connector’s benefits.

“So that’s the best place to build a highway? Where it’s already devastated, right? There’s a better use of land than highways,” said Waggonner, whose firm is working on Shreveport’s Cross Bayou Corridor redevelopment planning project.

Norquist argues that constructing a four-lane street with sidewalks, establishing a more efficient permitting process and developing infrastructure that serves existing streets would be more beneficial to Allendale than the connector.

Unlike the Claiborne Avenue corridor in New Orleans, which was prosperous when the interstate sliced through, the Allendale of today is the result of decades of deterioration.

Overgrown vacant lots next to boarded-up houses characterize the area. It’s void of major grocery stores and retail options. Crime and drugs stigmatize it — so much so that Brinson taught her children to not go there when they were younger.

Allendale once had more people, said Jose “Poncho” McCoy, a barber at Graham’s Beauty & Barber Shop, who supports business redevelopment there.

“This barber shop used to be busy all day,” he said.

The shop used to have six barbers. It now has two. He said demolition of the housing project took away customers and money.

James Herron, a barbershop patron, said if the connector is built through Allendale whatever happens is on the shoulders of Shreveport government officials.

“If the city management has the right outlook, they can build around the interstate. They can bring in businesses to build around the interstate,” he said. “It’s popular for the interstate to come through. If they don’t have the insight, the interstate is going to take away from it.”

Allendale still has a strong network of churches . Few businesses are left.

Norquist, a Wisconsin mayor from 1988 to 2004, said interstates are not made to do much for cities except funnel traffic through.

“A freeway might give you a couple of gas stations, but even then the gas stations won’t usually go into a neighborhood that is otherwise deteriorated,” he said.

If the proposed connector revitalizes Allendale the way local and state officials hope, Norquist said it would be the first for a highway project to do so.

“They don’t work in the middle of a city. All they do is concentrate traffic and create more resolve,” Norquist said.

He points to Detroit as another example of an urban area hollowed out by an interstate.

“You’ve got to build it back organically,” Norquist said of the Allendale. “Think small. Look for opportunities to build on. There’s not a magic solution.”

The latest

An option to send I-49 traffic along the existing path of the existing Louisiana Highway 3132 and Interstate 220 is being considered. It is hoped a preferred pathway is identified by the end of the year, says Kent Rogers, executive director of NLCOG.